Decline Why do MMOs suck so much?

[DragoFireheart]

Mmos suck because... people... suck.

 

[J1M]

Have you guys played Dungeons and Dragons Online? It isn't perfect but I think they got what you're complaining about right. Rogues are rogues.

I have not, actually. I see it's F2P so give it to me raw: is it playable or do you need to actually buy stuff to get anywhere?

To get a taste of what he is talking about you won't have to pay anything. Things that cost money are advanced classes and exotic races.

I also think that game did a number of things right in terms of quest/dungeon design (and especially with the use of a narrator), but I don't like the character customization systems they bolted on top of the D&D rules.

 

[laclongquan]

There was this stupid delivery quest and kill some shit quests you could do 101 times each. You get a big fat nada for doing that. Wasted a few days doing that. I eventually got bored. Played a dude who only gathered and crafted but never fought (if he could avoid it as some story elements required conbat). Seems you have to be x level to get to certain crafting tiers. Gay. Skills in that sense and combat levels should be different. Meh! It wasn’t as stupid as say Angels ONLINE. That game you could just program your character on auto and let them grind on their own all day or until the server severed by dc.

Wtf is with me playing angel games?

This is why you play MMORPG as a female, with customization toward a nearly nekkid amazon~ When I get bored of the game contents, I dont get bored watching some gyration on the screen.
Citation: City of Heroes and City of Villains~

 

[whydoibother]

This is why you play MMORPG as a female, with customization toward a nearly nekkid amazon~ When I get bored of the game contents, I dont get bored watching some gyration on the screen.
Citation: City of Heroes and City of Villains~

Thinking tits&ass is a substitute for gameplay is why asian mmos are such garbage.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I enjoyed the scenery (the actual background), the music and some of the crafting. I didn’t care that it was a gauntlet more or less of progression. The billion quests weren’t a big deal but the pay to play crap everywhere was stupid. Changed hands a lot I heard and still is. Was annoyed no swimming (unlike the initial perfect world where I had a lvl 1 dude swimming on the bottom of the whirlpool (yeah dumb no drowning or that lava did nothing). I admit a lot of really really stupid shit in those games.

For me, I fucking love crafting in games. Maybe some of that stems from world building games or tactical games. I don’t mind the regarding quests. What I hate is games that rely ONLY on your cool off abilities to defeat anything. Games I can smack and kill without a few thousand combo and special abilities works for me. The other just becomes a series of chaining and timing your skills over and over while standing in one spot more of less. Seems stupid when lag or a strike hits you and you’re no where even close.

And monster standing & mulling around like a herd of buffalo, wtf. MOOOOOOOOO!

I also like clearing shit out permanently. Respawn in .1 seconds just defeats that accomplishment. Ah well, they are what they are and I think I’ve only played maybe 1/2 dozen MMORPGS and sadly most were the Asian market.

 

[laclongquan]

This is why you play MMORPG as a female, with customization toward a nearly nekkid amazon~ When I get bored of the game contents, I dont get bored watching some gyration on the screen.
Citation: City of Heroes and City of Villains~

Thinking tits&ass is a substitute for gameplay is why asian mmos are such garbage.

T&A is NOT gameplay. It's graphic~ Get shit straight~

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Maybe people pseudo-larp their transsexual or gay fantasies through their female avatars. Shit, I heard people play house in WOW.

Smartest shit was the dude who bought digital real estate then sold off parcels for $$$.

Which brings up the point of the annoying global/trade channels where bots or yards repeatedly spam sales and they want your credit card digits. Usually it’s for like say 100million gold or whatever now. (Aion and ncsoft games period had this shit). So it got turned off.

 

[Reinhardt]

I just want Atlantica Online 2. Or some other tb time killer.

 

[MajorMace]

A most legitimate question considering the amazing potential of massively multiplayer rpgs.

When I was young I figured the future of the genre relied upon the guild mechanic, which back then was a simple team feature (and now that I think of it, still remains a basic team feature...). I had some hope that some designer, at some point, would put this "create your own structure, with its own hierarchy, and make it a part of a persistent world" gimmick to some amazing heights.
I mean hey, you got dozens of thousands of players, you don't need npcs anymore. Let people pick their role in this world - including purely social ones - and structure their own society as they see fit or have their environment turn into some chaotic jungle of dipshits. Make a low fantasy setting, where adventuring or robbery involve actual consequences, and helping each other isn't a cool feature but the core experience, the very basic foundation of the whole gameplay.
But it's just not worth the - rather bold and probably costly - experience. People like the wow formula and its derivatives, they don't ask for anything else somehow.


It's actually sad because each independant element necessary to make an actually engaging mmo are here : housing, trade etc... but the genre is frozen right now. So these features are usually turned pointless by the overall design direction, which puts the emphasis on the player, not the players.
Your house is safe, if not instantiated - which is understandable because who wants to lose his precious virtual belongings - and therefore completely disconnected from the world. You don't actually inhabit the world you're supposed to have your home in.
Trade is almost universally handled by the server's database - whatever the game -, you never know who sells or buys, you just know that the shit is gone or appeared in your inventory - which is understandable because who wants to take time to trade if you're a hero, an adventurer and a soldier of the pvp army on the side - so trade actually doesn't exist.
Some games put this instantiated bullshit to its paroxysm. Bioware's kotor online is a disgusting ignominy. WoW decided 15 years ago that the best way to handle their factions war was to put their battles in instantiated and therefore unconsequential "battlegrounds".
And that is nasty, because I remember back then that you could raid the opposite faction's capital cities, storm through their defenses and slaughter their npcs - theorically their leaders as well. Which is infinitely more fun in any regards. But since these shitty 10 min "battlegrounds" give you shiny loot, people have quickly transitioned to this new form of massively cutting yourself from the virtual environment you spend hours in.

I don't know man, I think it's because these games cost so much to make and to keep up that the risk is just never worth the try. Or something.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I never really got into the guild environment. I did on one game and even headed a guild but I got greedy with resources (then again... I was supplying most of the resources by my own mining/gathering/crafting...).

Are guilds still a big “thing?” Biggest thing I saw all the time was players always asking to duel on safe servers. Obviously pvp servers I assume it’s just bloodbath city.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Guilds are pretty big in WoW if you wanna raid or push high level m+ dungeons. I hate guilds though because I can't commit to their crazy schedules. It'll be like "be on for raids M/W/Th from 8pm-12am" and I'm like fuuuuck that shit. Then they want you to be logging in outside of that crazy ass schedule to grind some bullshit to prep for raid. And that's for a 'casual' guild I can't even imagine what a serious guild schedule is like.

No way in hell I'm committing to a single game the way you would commit to a job, but I think that's one reason a lot of people get addicted.. They feel socially pressured to log in so they don't lose their raid spot or something

 

[mfkndggrfll]

Because they are designed to be cash cows. Simple.

The amount of ressources required to craft a proper MMO prevents smaller devs from competing and forces big studios to be jewish.

MMOs cant have high quality hand crafted content because MMO players want quantity and will always be hungry no matter what, so they get fed fast food content.

MMOs suck because people play them regardless of how bad they are.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I never liked guilds because I am too offensive for most people. Apparently replying to the news the guild leader's girlfriend had a miscarriage with, "Good, we needed a new healer anyways" is not very nice.

 

[MajorMace]

The guilds you guys are talking about are not the one I hoped for.
Of course guilds suck, since they're the mirror of these games' shallowness.

Are guilds still a big “thing?” Biggest thing I saw all the time was players always asking to duel on safe servers.

Yes, but only through the prism of the wow formula. People take part in guilds mostly because games either require some player resources to tackle the end game or because there are some sorts of achievements or whatever that include guild stuff.

You'll never have a game which puts the emphasis on founding an organisation with other players and trying to live/survive/thrive in the game's environment. They're almost always and exclusively "teams", "clans" or whatever name you could put on a multiplayer game's team.
They don't go beyond the tag that appear before your name - as long as the game design usually goes - and as I wrote some achievement and irrelevant shit.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Guilds are pretty big in WoW if you wanna raid or push high level m+ dungeons. I hate guilds though because I can't commit to their crazy schedules. It'll be like "be on for raids M/W/Th from 8pm-12am" and I'm like fuuuuck that shit. Then they want you to be logging in outside of that crazy ass schedule to grind some bullshit to prep for raid. And that's for a 'casual' guild I can't even imagine what a serious guild schedule is like.

No way in hell I'm committing to a single game the way you would commit to a job, but I think that's one reason a lot of people get addicted.. They feel socially pressured to log in so they don't lose their raid spot or something

Maybe if I have a Patreon, gofundme account where they pay me enough to game all the time but I ain’t no awesome online celebrity so that won’t happen.

Sounds like a ducking job rather than a game. Come on! I want casual rumpy-hunty not a lifetime commitment.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Maybe if I have a Patreon, gofundme account where they pay me enough to game all the time but I ain’t no awesome online celebrity so that won’t happen.

Sounds like a ducking job rather than a game. Come on! I want casual rumpy-hunty not a lifetime commitment.

Yea people who play WoW are nuts. I've gone to WoW specific forums and asked simple questions like "how much play time would it take to get to max level and gear for current raids?" and the conversation usually goes like this:

"about a month"
me: A month /played or a month IRL?
"a month IRL"
me: Well how many hours /played is that?
"idk"
me: well how many hours per day then?
"like 10"

then you ask "why is the game so boring?" and they say "it's boring until u get to the current content"

okay yeah eat shit as if I'm going to play 300 hours of boring tutorial before getting to the "real" game these people literally don't have any sense of value for their time

 

[Damned Registrations]

All the old content is boring as fuck because it got nerfed so the incompetent shitbirds that don't want to put in any time or effort to reach the end could 'win' it and feel accomplished. Such a waste of a huge amount of content.

 

[Darkforge]

World of Warcraft.

This is why...

 

[Drakron]

okay yeah eat shit as if I'm going to play 300 hours of boring tutorial before getting to the "real" game these people literally don't have any sense of value for their time

Let me tell you something, there is no "real game" as endgame, all you have is repetition of the same activities over and over for a performance boost to preform said activities and since we are talking about dungeons/raids/world bosses its even more boring since those have a right way of doing then and there is very small variation, in fact it gets worst because the higher you climb up all you meet is people that want to do it the "right way" and that means gear have to be x, it have to include x class and so on ... and you cannot really escape that.

These people were conditioned to believe that is a MMO and the whole purpose is to effectively grind a dungeon for drops so they can grind that dungeon with a plus 5% efficiency so that is what they will tell other people and this is why MMO have very high turn rates of players were after 3-4 months the population drops to 25% of launch numbers since people quit within that timeframe, this is why MMO are made or broke within the first year since they have to grab those people as much as they can because when they get into the cycle they wont quit.

A MMO is only fun during leveling since it allows for experimentation as the risks tend to be much lower for failure and are more forgiving in terms of screwing around so there is both less stress and more figuring how things work out, its when it reaches the end this ends, the "endgame" is not the real game, its the real JOB as you dont just play for a bit, you have a checklist of shit you have to do before logging off if you want to go anywhere and that just gets worst because the only place you can go is becoming like those people, playing 10 hours a day (even if thats not playing, they are either idling waiting for something or farming) for months, you also will think the same way they do, not because its fun but became that is "the objective" as they come to consider, the only break is when a expansion comes out and those come simply because people WILL burn out eventually and are made so they move the goalposts and what the "the objective" is, you stop farming some dungeon just to start working on farming another.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

Well to be fair the endgame is often the best part. Its the only part of the game (the raids) that offer a sort of challenge and punishes you from playing poorly. This is the part where cooperation, communication and optimization are needed.

The issue is that MMOs are constantly dumbing down that part so that casuals can succeed and earn their gear without actually having to learn the game or play well.

The purpose of grinding dungeons is often to get epic loot to get an edge in PvP and shit on other people. PvP is arguably the best part of a MMO too.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

PC MMO is probably dead or being regurgitated into mobile barf bags. I gloss over shit and am late to the party but I noticed Runescape is joining that awesomeness of people having phones with lewt mobile play, but I guess PC is still part of playoptions..... for now.

 

[Hevnknekt]

Am I hopelessly naive for having a little bit of faith that 'Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen' and 'Camelot: Unchained' won't be two pieces of filth? Probably, but I've been keeping an eye on them and like what I've heard so far. Well, eyes don't hear, but you know what I mean.

 

[DarkShinobi]

okay yeah eat shit as if I'm going to play 300 hours of boring tutorial before getting to the "real" game these people literally don't have any sense of value for their time

Let me tell you something, there is no "real game" as endgame, all you have is repetition of the same activities over and over for a performance boost to preform said activities and since we are talking about dungeons/raids/world bosses its even more boring since those have a right way of doing then and there is very small variation, in fact it gets worst because the higher you climb up all you meet is people that want to do it the "right way" and that means gear have to be x, it have to include x class and so on ... and you cannot really escape that.

These people were conditioned to believe that is a MMO and the whole purpose is to effectively grind a dungeon for drops so they can grind that dungeon with a plus 5% efficiency so that is what they will tell other people and this is why MMO have very high turn rates of players were after 3-4 months the population drops to 25% of launch numbers since people quit within that timeframe, this is why MMO are made or broke within the first year since they have to grab those people as much as they can because when they get into the cycle they wont quit.

A MMO is only fun during leveling since it allows for experimentation as the risks tend to be much lower for failure and are more forgiving in terms of screwing around so there is both less stress and more figuring how things work out, its when it reaches the end this ends, the "endgame" is not the real game, its the real JOB as you dont just play for a bit, you have a checklist of shit you have to do before logging off if you want to go anywhere and that just gets worst because the only place you can go is becoming like those people, playing 10 hours a day (even if thats not playing, they are either idling waiting for something or farming) for months, you also will think the same way they do, not because its fun but became that is "the objective" as they come to consider, the only break is when a expansion comes out and those come simply because people WILL burn out eventually and are made so they move the goalposts and what the "the objective" is, you stop farming some dungeon just to start working on farming another.

Wow, this is so true, of course, considering almost only the PVE scene.

 

[Interstellar]

Why suck? I wouldn't say so. A lot of people playing good MMORPGs. Wow, RF Online, Lineage and Lineage Classic. All these old folks are holding huge gaming audience.

 

[Fishy]

Ha, this is right down my alley of things I love to feel miserable about. I'm not going to claim MMOs are awful, which would be silly considering how many people enjoy them, or that modern MMOs have zero interest to me, as I do enjoy some aspects of them at times. However...

Like many RPG players of a certain age, I was already dreaming of MMOs before they happened. Pre-Internet, like. Yes, yes, I know, dark, dark days... I'm not sure what happened first then, but I remember Meridian 59 as one of the earliest I got to try and it felt magical. Absolutely magical. I knew nothing about that world, but seeing the other characters played by human doing their thing was incredible. And where classic games had static behaviours encoded for NPCs, here I could ask people for help in killing that giant centipede (yes, giant centipedes, M59 was... special...) or shout and point at the known murdered in town and see the other characters run towards the foe. Mind blown.

Then, it was Ultima Online. And this was the dream come true. Ultima was my big favourite franchise, thanks to having started with Ultima 3 on my Apple //c, and Ultima7 BG/SI rating as some of my all-time favourites to this day. UO promised to be like an online U7. Take my favourite world, add player agency, pump that up with player-run economy, it was going to be everything I ever dreamed of. Well, that and a girlfriend, tbh. Dark, dark days... And then, it happened. At first it was insanely great. I could roleplay as a beggar and make a living out of wandering the streets and chatting with other players and relying on the generosity of high rollers and the unsafe purses of others. Fishing and cooking was a thing and with food requirements, someone had to do it. Activities, no matter what they were, were valued.

But it wasn't long before UO faced the obstacle that would pretty much kill the dream of putting RPG into the MMO: gamers. I soon had to face the fact that most people in the game didn't care for the RP part of RPGs. They were never here to be someone else, to play out a dream, to have a giant pen-and-paper session without a DM. They were here to loot, min-max numbers, and destroy anything that could be built. Economy got wrecked, pvp out of control, and the turning point happened: rather than spend a lot of time and effort in fixing that (and I'm not saying I've got any magical recipe myself), they folded. They launched Trammel. And that's when the dream died. This was the turning point when the game stopped being this awesome playground for roleplaying, and became a glorified fantasy-skinned chatroom with minigames. PvP became consensual. Pickpocketing forbidden. Food requirement was dropped. Other players suddenly became optional NPCs. You didn't need them anymore. Everyone suddenly played their own game with an optional coop option.

And that has been the dominant template ever since. And in fairness, I can't blame the developers. This is what the vast majority of gamers want: a safe space where they can increase stats and play dress up without having to rely on anyone else, and social features tacked on to increase stats and play dress up in a group. The old RPG player in me is sad about it, but my dream was always a niche thing. It won't happen because gamers are gamers, and anonymity doesn't bring out the best in people. If it can be broken, it will, and designing a game that will work around that seems incredibly difficult. Kudos to the EVE developers in that regards, it's possibly the biggest player-driven sandbox around and seems to still be going strong.

Anyhow, MMOs these days are something else, and something that plenty of gamers enjoy. It's not my place to tell them they should know better. And I've learn to enjoy the chill experience that is the safe MMO space over time (had a lot of fun exploring Middle-Earth with friends in LotRO), as well as the lovely madness that is faction-based PvP (LotrO again, GW2 these days). As far as I'm concerned, MMOs don't suck, they're just not what they could have been. And it's our fault: we can't be trusted.


tl;dr: gamers happened.